After Onwurah was born in Wallsend, Northumberland, her family moved to Awka, Nigeria, in 1965 while she was still a baby. Just two years later the Biafra War broke out, bringing famine with it, forcing her mother to bring the children back to Tyneside, while her father stayed there in the Biafran army.[6]

Onwurah graduated from Imperial College London in 1987 with a degree in Electrical Engineering.[7] She worked in hardware and software development, product management, market development and strategy for a variety of mainly private sector companies in a number of different countries – the UK, France, the United States, Nigeria and Denmark while studying for an MBA at Manchester Business School.[8]

Prior to entering Parliament, Onwurah was Head of Telecoms Technology at Ofcom,[9] with a focus on broadband provision.[8]

She was elected to Parliament in 2010 with a majority of 7,466.[10] She described Parliament as a "culture shock" but also said that compared with her engineering background "parliament is the most diverse working environment I've ever been in, the most gender balanced".[4]

In February 2014, Onwurah spoke in a parliamentary debate she had called on gender-specific toy marketing and lent her support to the campaign Let Toys Be Toys. In her speech to the House of Commons, she said:

"Before entering Parliament, I spent two decades as a professional engineer, working across three continents. Regardless of where I was or the size of the company, it was always a predominantly male, or indeed all-male, environment, but it is only when I walk into a toy shop that I feel I am really experiencing gender segregation."[12]

She later told Kira Cochrane of The Guardian, that she believes the limiting of children by gender stereotypes is a serious economic issue, with the proportion of female students on engineering degree courses having fallen from 12% to 8% in the thirty years since she had started studying for one herself. Referring to a shortage of engineers and the UK having "the lowest proportion in Europe of women who are professional engineers" she said "toys are so important and formative, and for me this is about the jobs of the future, about what happens in 10 or 15 years' time. We can't go on with a segregated society."[13]

In the January 2016 reshuffle, Onwurah's frontbench role for culture and the digital economy was briefly split between herself and Thangam Debbonaire. According to Onwurah, Corbyn did not communicate this change to either MP directly or tell Debbonaire when he reversed his decision, leaving them in limbo as to their precise responsibilities. Moreover, he refused requests for clarification [17] A spokesman for Corbyn's office, disputing the lack of "negotiation" in January, said "at no point was anyone sacked. We regret that Chi feels she was singled out, but this was clearly not the case. Chi Onwurah’s comments relate to a discussion about the delineation of shadow cabinet roles last January, as is not uncommon in both shadow cabinets and cabinets."[18]

Onwurah noted that the confusion affected two of the ethnic minority, female MPs (out of a 5% total), and argued that employment law required private sector managers to be considerably more sensitive and responsive in handling comparable situations. She stated: "If this had been any of my previous employers in the public and private sectors, Jeremy might well have found himself before an industrial tribunal for constructive dismissal, probably with racial discrimination thrown in".[17] Onwurah later wrote that "I made no accusation of racism against Jeremy", after claims had been made of her "playing the race card".[19]

Onwurah backed Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election, but remained a Labour frontbencher.[20] In August 2016, during the Labour leadership campaign she publicly supported Owen Smith's calls on a rerun of the referendum on the UK's EU membership [21]